COWETA, Okla. — The plans for some nondescript land, in the outskirts of Coweta, are causing a stir.
“It ruins all our little farms, around here, that we’ve worked our lives on,” Sylvia Frost, a local farmer said.
WATCH: LISTENING IN COWETA: Farmers raise concerns over planned data center
2 News listened to Frost and her husband, George. Their property is just a stone’s throw away from a planned data center.
“We don’t know what all this stuff is gonna do to our livestock,” Frost said. “We’ve got donkeys and horses and mules here, and pigs. We don’t know what all this noise and air pollution from these diesel generators are gonna do.”
With those concerns in mind, 2 News spoke with Tony Burkhart, who represents Beale Infrastructure, the data center’s developer. The group hosted a public meeting on Oct. 28.
MORE COVERAGE >>> 2 News Oklahoma's Clifton Haskin listened to similar concerns
“We have a pretty particular focus to build sustainable, responsibly-sided data centers, in close partnerships with communities,” Burkhart said.
What qualifies the data center as sustainable?
“It’s a great question. Our goal is to work with communities to define what that means for that particular community, right? Our goal is to figure out: what does it mean to them? And try to make sure that we’re designing and engineering solutions to meet that definition and meet that goal,” Burkhart said.
As for the data stored at this planned facility, Burkhart said it is somewhat mysterious.
“I actually don’t know the answer to that question. And I’m not sure our customers would be able to. Most of them, their policy is, we don’t look at your data,” Burkhart said.
The frosts are concerned and fearful, but admit – it was everyone who brought the data centers to be.
“The reason we’re having these data centers pop up all over the United States, is because all of us are demanding all this AI, all this information, right now, right now, right right now,” Frost said, “I’m just as guilty as anybody else as wanting it right on my phone, like that. And that’s where all this is coming from.”
Developers say they recently finished a project in Tucson, Arizona, saying they made significant changes to the plans, based on community input.
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